


The Sum Of Our Failings

by wintergrey



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Case Fic, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 04:39:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1076632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintergrey/pseuds/wintergrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft Holmes unexpectedly finds himself in possession of an infant girl on of a terrible day in which his potentially infinite fallibility haunts him and someone innocent pays the price for a cascade of failures committed by numerous people—the sum of which is as terrible and as hopeful as could be imagined. </p><p>Active case involves a serial killer. Story includes death of peripheral characters, reference to an off-screen suicide, and unvarnished, though brief, description a murder scene. No sexualized violence, no child death, no on-screen violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sum Of Our Failings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [overthemoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/overthemoon/gifts).



"I could run get someone from the DfE," Anthea said helpfully.

That was the only helpful thing she was doing. She wasn’t even touching it. Mycroft might have expected her to throw herself on it like it was a grenade—if he’d believed that women were naturally inclined to such things, but his own childhood had thoroughly disabused him of the notion.

"How on Earth did it get in here?" Mycroft wasn’t inclined to such instincts himself but he had to confess—very, very privately where even God couldn’t hear him—that simply standing there while a baby looked up at him from an utterly insufficient and battered cardboard box seemed inappropriate.

"I think it’s a girl." Anthea craned her neck for a better look. Mycroft regretted not staying behind for another drink while he was at the club, he could use the fortification now.

"Because it’s wearing pink? Don’t be sexist, Anthea. You of all people." Still, there was something markedly feminine about the wide eyes and rosy little mouth. Mycroft put his umbrella in the stand and hung up his coat. "Call Sherlock for me, will you? I want to know who put this in my office. For God’s sake, it could have been a bomb. I want him here before security falls all over itself trying to deflect blame instead of solving the problem."

"You’re just going to leave it there?" At least she was getting her phone out. Mycroft hung his suit jacket up as well and rolled up his sleeves.

"Hardly. I’m not my brother." Mycroft gingerly moved aside the thin, cheap pink blanket—it felt synthetic, that wouldn’t do—so as not to disturb too much evidence. The pink faux-velvet sleeper—with a dirty white satin rose appliqué over the heart—was damp. It had been raining for days.

"It’s very well-behaved," Anthea noted approvingly.

"Never a good sign, is it, darling?" Mycroft said in a voice he didn’t recognize as his own, he’d never sounded like that before. He lifted the baby out—she didn’t weigh very much—and awkwardly held her in the crook of one arm. "Children are rarely exceptionally good for anything but very bad reasons."

The baby sucked her fist and stared at him with wide-eyes. Her little hand had a bruise from her own mouth.

"Ah. Sherlock. I’m sending a car." Anthea had her "braced for impact" voice on. "Yes, it’s an emergency. Your brother’s acquired an infant. I realize it’s… oh, you’ll be right here. I. That’s unexpectedly… yes, I’ll let him know." She tucked her phone away. "He’s coming."

"Amusing himself with my trials will bring him faster than an interesting corpse." Mycroft frowned down at the baby, who frowned back at him. She had an alarming glower. "That secretary two doors down has children."

"Mrs. Ellis."

"Whatever her name is, yes. Take her with you. I want bottles, nappies, all those things." The baby kicked at his arm with a filthy little foot.

"You don’t expect to keep it," Anthea said disapprovingly.

"I expect you to do what I ask," Mycroft said, turning all his irritation on her without a moment’s guilt. "Before I replace you with Mrs. Ellis. She, at least, has proven herself useful."

"I’ll fetch those things, then." Anthea left in a virtual cloud of frost, she’d gone so chilly.

"Never allow other people’s expectations to determine your course of action, Rose." Mycroft bounced her gently as he walked to the window to watch for Sherlock’s car. "In fact, I strongly suggest that from time to time—so long as it does not prove detrimental—you choose the opposite of what is expected of you. It can be quite an adventure."

 

***

Lestrade was on the verge of falling asleep at his desk, cheek smeared across one palm, eyes glazed with tedium, when motion at his open door caught his attention. Donovan. She frowned at him, head tilted.

“Thought you’d be up at the Ministry.” She didn’t have to say which one.

“Why?” He had a sudden case of the Creeping Dread.

“Some of the boys said Sherlock Holmes is up around there. Something about a suspicious package in one of the offices. Don’t think he’d go for just anyone.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Thought you’d have been up there at the speed of light.” Her look was knowing. Damn it. Well, at least there was no reason to pretend he wasn’t half-panicked.

“They haven’t called the bomb squad or anyone?” Greg shoved his files haphazardly into his briefcase and crammed his computer in on top of it all. It took two shoves but it latched.

“Haven’t even called us. But you know. Sherlock Holmes is there. What could go wrong?” Her eyeroll was so dramatic he could practically hear it.

“What couldn’t?” Greg tried not to fan the flames of that particular bonfire but he was feeling more than a bit out of joint. “All right. Congratulations, you get to handle my interview that’s waiting. Should be a doddle. Man’s a complete moron. Thick as mud.”

“The thug who cracked poor old granny’s head open in that market robbery?” Donovan's expression darkened. “She passed away, did she? So it’s murder.”

“Damn right it’s murder. If you make him hurt a little, well, I wasn’t here to see it.” Greg gave her a grin as he shrugged into his coat. The weather out beyond the windows was grim and him without an umbrella as usual. “Don’t make a mess of this one, Donovan. It’s all but settled.”

“It’ll get done, sir.” She stepped aside to let him pass. “Done in time for tea.”

“Call me when it is.”

The drive to Mycroft’s office was interminable and, when Greg arrived, all seemed to be in order. Strange. For a moment, he wondered if he’d been pranked. He waded through security and all the rigmarole that was supposed to keep Mycroft—and his colleagues—safe. Whatever had happened, none of the wands or scans or checks had done a damn bit of good.

It was a difficult job, keeping his temper just now. He’d gone from tired to terrified to... to this total absence of action. If there were only something to do, he could manage. It wasn’t as though he was family, or even Mycroft’s romantic partner. Wet and shabby and out of place, he shuffled into the lift and waited to be raised up to a level he didn’t deserve to reach. Of course, the public lift was geriatric, creakingly slow.

Greg didn’t deserve to reach the upper floors—both literal and figurative—by other people’s standards, mind. Not his own standards. And to his everlasting surprise, not Mycroft’s. A year ago he’d have expected some kind of disdain, being kept at arm’s length. And, though they were pragmatically private about their affair, Mycroft never seemed ashamed of it. Of him.

That left Greg baffled because, as tender and intense and deeply affectionate as their encounters were, there was always some thin-but-impervious barrier that remained intact. He wasn’t about to give Mycroft up over it. Even a brief glimpse into the shoebox of memories of them he’d collected left him warm from cheeks to toes and everything in between. Mycroft’s wicked smirk and flawless attire had gotten Greg’s blood up from the get-go. The man simply begged to be rumpled.

Whatever kept Mycroft apart from him, though, it wasn’t that he thought Greg wasn’t good enough for him. Maybe it was that Mycroft didn’t want the mixup of any more family than he had to deal with already. Greg came with a certain amount of baggage—kids, ex-wife—and the Holmes family was more than any soul ought to deal with. It was probably for the best for them both, professionally, in spite of Greg’s occasional regrets. The lift wheezed to a halt and Greg stepped out into another world.

The hall was dead quiet. Being here was eerie, to be quite honest, and Greg tried not to be honest with himself about it. It reeked of rank and age and wealth and a time he was fairly glad had passed. He felt nearly infinitely uncomfortable here in the presence of so many who found him distasteful and disposable simply over an accident of birth and the condition of his employment.

A neat, rosy woman hurried out of Mycroft’s office. She looked as out of place as Greg felt, with her round freckled face and scraped back ginger hair and plump arms and sensible shoes. Her badge was Ministry-issue, though, and her grey eyes—as she approached him—were piercing.

“Good afternoon, Detective Inspector,” she said briskly. Definitely not out of place, whoever she was.

“Mrs. Ellis.” Mycroft popped out of his office looking for all the world like a harried meerkat. Greg had quite literally never seen him in his shirt sleeves outside of their apartments—usually only on his way to being completely naked.

“Yes, Mr. Holmes?”

“The bunnies... in the front?” Mycroft’s expression was hopeful.

“Yes, Mr. Holmes. The bunnies go in the front,” Mrs. Ellis said patiently.

“Wasn’t certain, thank you. When they’re crawling, that would put them on the topside, you see, and...” Mycroft shook his head. “Foolish of me, I apologize. Please. Carry on.” He popped out of sight again with the same frantic alacrity with which he’d arrived.

“No trouble at all, sir.” With that, Mrs. Ellis breezed past off to her own office.

Greg wasn’t sure what universe he was in. What he did know was that he was sodden, even down the back of his shirt, his briefcase weighed several tonnes, and he was very cold. In whatever universe this was, Mycroft had an interest in bunnies. Cautiously, he approached Mycroft’s door.

“This could well have been a bomb.” That was Sherlock. Crisp and imperious. “I would have preferred a bomb, to be quite honest. Less messy. But this will suffice. And it’s marginally amusing. At least, it’s not boring.”

“Sherlock.” John, chiding. “A bomb. Really?”

“I wasn’t assuming he would have been so foolish as to set it off, would you, Mycroft?”

“I would certainly endeavour not to do so. Not while I was in the vicinity.” Mycroft was definitely tense but not unhappy. “There we go. All done.”

“You’re disappointingly adept with that creature.” Sherlock. Pouting, Greg could see it in his mind’s eye. “I can’t wait to find out where it came from so you can put it back.”

“She has a name, Sherlock,” John sounded a bit miffed.

“Yes, and it’s so terribly original.” Sherlock’s disdain drifted out like a miasma and spurred Greg to action.

“Who has a name?” He asked briskly. Didn’t matter how baffled and confused he was. He was a DI, he was on the job, and he knew how to put on a good front. “Heard there might be some trouble here, had some free time.”

“Lestrade. Thought I heard your shoes squeaking. Granny kicked it, cut and dried murder, was it?” Sherlock was crouched in the centre of Mycroft’s office, prodding a dirty box with the end of his pen. “Got a confession and scurried on over, I see. Did you put the boot in?” He looked up and gave Greg the kind of look he’d seen on carrion birds at a day-old murder scene.

“Left it in Donovan’s hands.” Greg gave him a tight smile. “She’ll get it done. So, if it’s not a bomb, what is it?” John and Mycroft were huddled over something laid out on the desk.

“Worse.” Sherlock’s mouth twisted with disgust. He used the pen to lift a grubby pink blanket out of the box. “A baby.”

“Her name is Rose, Sherlock.” John turned, hands on hips, face firmly set in lines that read: one-hundred-percent finished with your nonsense, Sherlock. “I recall that you were quite anticipatory all the way over.”

“Mycroft is managing, apparently.” Sherlock lifted a pink sleeper next. “Though he’s been unable to come up with a name that’s not inspired by the design on this insipid garment.”

“I did not name her for that reason.” Mycroft turned around and he was holding in one arm—with unexpected competence—a very tiny baby in a wooly brown hooded sleeper and managing to feed her a bottle with his free hand. On closer inspection, the hood had little bear ears lined in pink satin. “Rose is a perfectly good name for someone who appeared out of nowhere in a strange box.”

“The box does seem to be the key,” Sherlock said obliviously. “This lettering is Thai.”

Greg barely heard him. He was aware of clutching the rain-slick handle of his too-heavy briefcase so hard his hand ached. The smile Mycroft gave him when he looked up from tending to the baby was so melting it inspired a flood of inappropriate impulses and he needed something to anchor him to the floor where he stood.

 _Rose_. That brought back memories of their first night in front of the telly. He’d expected it to be terribly awkward—Mycroft staying over at his just to be equitable—and then, just like that, it wasn’t.

_“You won’t like it. It’s... it’s a children’s show.” Greg had always been marginally aware of the distances between them, never more than now, with Mycroft emerging from the shower of his painfully middle-class flat._

_“You underestimate me. I’m wounded.”_

_“Fine. But you don’t know any of the characters.”_

_“I know what a Cyberman is, Greg. Do give me a little credit.”_

_“I wouldn’t have thought you were allowed to watch it.” Greg couldn’t imagine, though Sherlock did put him in mind of a Dalek from time to time._

_“I wasn’t.” Mycroft came around the end of the sofa, scrubbed clean and flushed from the hot shower, wrapped in Greg’s plaid flannel robe. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to, though.” He sat down next to Greg and put an arm around his shoulders. “Put it on. It’s the one with the shop girl, right?”_

_“Rose, yes.” Greg leaned into him and hit play._

_“Never underestimate shop girls,” Mycroft said quite seriously. “If I were forced to take someone into a fight with me, I’d pick a shop girl over any of the lads I was in school with.”_

_“Oh?”_

_“Please, Greg.” Mycroft’s look was both arch and affectionate at once. “My upbringing hardly lent itself to a pragmatic skillset. And that’s being polite about it.”_

_“And I also have a pragmatic skillset, do I?” Well, Greg could live with that if it meant Mycroft wrapped in his bathrobe and here on his comfortable, tweedy sofa._

_“You have much more than that.” Now Mycroft’s look was—it was almost the look on his face here in the present. And then he’d kissed Greg softly, on the mouth. “Never underestimate yourself, either, Greg. I certainly never do.”_

“I’m sure she has a name of her own,” Greg said into the here and now, shocked at the cold edge of his own voice when he felt so very differently about it all. “No sense putting effort into something that’s irrelevant.”

“That philosophy has certainly stood you in good stead cracking cases, of course.” Sherlock rose and turned on his heel, fixing Greg with a piercing look that almost—almost—put him back a pace. “In this case, however, the point is not misplaced. The box is from a garment factory. There is blood on the underside, most certainly human. It contained silk thread used in machine embroidery. That there is not a child of Thai descent by any stretch of the imagination, I expect the box was simply at hand. That does not make it useless, however.”

“I’ve checked.” Anthea leaned in. “No reports of a missing child.”

“We might assume the parents are deceased, in that case.” Sherlock swept up the box and sniffed it. “Exhaust fumes, oil, and gasoline. Diesel, even. Too much to be found in an alley. Garment district.” He sniffed up the box again, stared at it. “Goldhawk Road. Half-empty, under construction, perfect place to hide. Mycroft, stay here.”

“I have no intention of leav—“

“On second thought, don’t stay here either, he’s been here once.” Sherlock discarded the box on his way to the door. “And don’t go home. Particularly don’t go home. He may mean to kill you.”

“Who?” Everyone said it at the same time and the baby hiccupped pitifully, the prelude to a sob. The way Mycroft cuddled her up made Greg ludicrously weak in the knees.

“Case some years back. Serial killer in the making. You and I couldn’t make it stick enough to keep him in the country, Mycroft. He lived on Goldhawk Road, above a milner’s shop. He’s returned. Detective Inspector on the case was a complete prat—don’t care to remember his name.” There was an air of offense there that led Greg to believe that perhaps the DI hadn’t been entirely to blame.

“Earl Donnelly.” Mycroft held the child a little closer. “Killed his landlord and landlady, left a child. His own parents died under suspicious circumstances. You were sure of it, as was I.”

“Don’t go home, whatever you do. He only kills parents. Usually in front of their children.” Sherlock turned abruptly in the doorway, nearly running John over. John made a noise like a drying kettle as he ducked around Sherlock and out into the hall. “And he’s made some kind of parent of you, Mycroft. Suppose he knew it wouldn’t work on me.”

“Call if you find anything.” Greg followed them to the hall, still reeling from the rush of information. The case was unfamiliar, already he was reaching in his pocket for his phone. “I’ll have cars on standby. Watson?”

“Will do, Lestrade,” John replied in that tone that said he had no bloody intention of doing so unless one of them were dead or dying.

“Damn it.” Greg put his briefcase down and located his phone to dial Anderson.

“Anthea, pack up these things,” Mycroft said in a low voice. “And have a car brought around. This office is obviously insufficiently secure. You may bring to the attention of the head of security the fact that a serial killer managed to smuggle an infant into my office sight unseen. Please do communicate my displeasure.”

“Of course.” Anthea sounded positively thrilled—it was the happiest Greg had ever heard her sound. “And then?”

“I suggest that being in the vicinity of my home or office would be unwise, given our association. Take a long weekend, I will recall you as necessary.”

“Thank you, sir.” Anthea shut the door behind her on her way out.

“Anderson, get me unmarked cars over to Goldhawk Road,” Greg said as soon as the man—finally—answered. “No sirens. Pull the file on Earl Donnelly from a few years ago, send it to me. Killed a family on Goldhawk Road. He may be back. I want a bulletin out on him. He may also be after the Holmes brothers. Holmes and Watson are on their way over to investigate. Keep your distance but I want someone in the area if things go tits up, hear?”

“Yes, sir.” The man sounded more competent by the day. Donovan was good for him. “And where will you be?”

“I’ll be remaining with Mycroft Holmes. There’s a child involved that was left in his care. Apparently this Donnelly prefers to kill parents, we believe that’s where he got the child. Keep an eye out for any reports of missing people who have an infant about...” He squinted at the baby.

“Eight weeks,” Mycroft supplied. “Mrs. Ellis was fairly certain.”

“Eight weeks. Might not hurt to do a quiet canvas of the surrounds. Get Donovan off that murder—“

“She’s wrapped that up, sir.”

“—oh. Very good. Well, get her in on this as well. Keep me updated.”

And then, it was quiet. Very still, then the silence was broken by a tiny, wet belch. Greg turned to see Mycroft with the baby laid against his shoulder, patting her back.

He’d never, in a million years, have expected to see Mycroft like this: shirt rumpled, trousers losing their crease, hair out of place. The way Mycroft held the baby—held Rose—brought out the lines of the muscles in his forearms and the strength of his hands. He was a highly capable man, and not just in his familiar sphere—though Greg knew he doubted that. All of his prim tension was gone, replaced by a languid composure that Greg could only rarely coax from him.

If he’d seen Mycroft like this on first meeting, he would have made an idiot of himself on the spot, he’d have been so smitten. As it was, Greg wanted nothing more than to kiss him shamelessly and murmur a string of compliments all to do with how very much even temporary parenthood added to Mycroft’s sexual appeal. He had to pull on his detective face in order to keep things professional. They’d always agreed they’d keep things professional.

***

The silence after Greg closed his conversation with Anderson was growing uncomfortable. Mycroft stopped marvelling at the difference in weight between a starving, cold baby and a full-bellied warm one to study Greg’s expression. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to find there. Perhaps anything other than dismay or distaste. What he found was rather inscrutable, pensive and professional at once.

“I’m aware it’s forward of me,” Mycroft said, aware of the stiffness creeping into his voice, “but I was hoping I could impose upon your hospitality. That we could.”

“Yes. Of course.” Greg ran a hand through his damp hair, turning it into a forest of silver-black spikes the way that he did some mornings when they had the good fortune to be on the same timetable. “You should give me the child, though. Rose. In case he’s watching. I’ll take her in my car, you should leave separately.”

“What does that accomplish?” Mycroft was certain Greg had some reason for it, he just couldn’t get his head around sending the baby off with someone else. It was, after all, his. He’d always taken particular pride in tending to all his responsibilities—even Sherlock. An infant was hardly going to be more contrary than his younger brother was now. Sherlock had been nearly tractable as a child, if odd.

“If he thinks you’re attached to her, it’ll feed into his compulsion,” Greg said patiently. “If he thinks she’s only gone off with the police, he’ll alter his course. He may even lose interest in her. I’ll put the light up on the car so he knows I’m a Detective—if he’s watching.” He spoke slowly, as though Mycroft had suffered some manner of head injury. As irritating as it was, it worked.

“Yes, of course.” Now that Greg had said it, the words made perfect sense. Mycroft forced himself to relinquish Rose, offering her to Greg. She’d fallen asleep now, all full and warm. “I should have thought of it myself. I’ll finish up here and then what would you like?”

“Well. I’d suggest... taking the Tube,” Greg said, with all the enthusiasm of suggesting that Mycroft throw himself into the nearest gutter. He took Rose with practiced ease and settled her into his arms. She didn’t even twitch. “Instead of a car that might draw attention. It’s just minutes from mine. But—“

“I’m capable of managing the Tube.”

Mycroft couldn’t get much more rumpled than he was at present. Strangely, it didn’t bother him nearly as much as others might have suspected. It wasn’t being a little mussed that troubled him—if he were honest with himself, which he tried to avoid as much as possible some days—it was having his façade cracked, so to speak.

People didn’t look further than a flawless suit and a fine watch and perfect shoes. Intimidated, they rarely met one’s eyes. A rumpled man, however, people felt they had some kind of business knowing what was going on in his head or, worse, his heart. A rumpled man was a map of errors and wrong turns—Mycroft might have been one on the inside, but he wasn’t about to let the world know.

“I’ll let you know the route, then. I’ll send someone to collect the box and her clothes in case we can use them to track her down. This is her car seat?” Greg used his foot to spin the elaborate baby-seating contraption on the floor.

“Borrowed from Mrs. Ellis, yes. She had a spare in her car.” Mycroft searched his pockets for his cufflinks.

“People leave the car seat in the car, Mycroft,” Greg said with some amusement. He settled Rose into the seat. She looked like a very tiny astronaut preparing for a trip to outer space. A bear astronaut, given the wooly sleeper, which would make her a Russian.

“Wait.” Without warning, Mycroft did something else that no one would have expected of him. He upended his wastebasket onto his desk. Packaging and clothes hangers rained out and then he found what he was after. The nappy Rose had been wearing. There’d been no labels in her clothing but—he undid the little tabs.

“Mycroft, what are you doing?” Greg sounded horrified. Mycroft was fairly certain this was on a par with, say, showing up naked to meet the Queen. Well, if Sherlock could do it...

“Finding out where Rose comes from.” Mycroft held the nappy out at arms’ length, under his desk lamp. “This warning about not consuming the gel within the nappy—I keep telling people we should do away with warning labels, they’re breeding stupidity—the warning is printed in Russian. There weren’t any tags in her clothes or on her blanket—of course. I expect her mother removed them.” He bundled the nappy up again and began refilling the wastebasket.

“So she’s from Russia?” Greg looked down at the little girl in the car seat. “How on Earth?”

“It’s possible—we only know for certain that the nappy is Russian in origin. Donnelly fled the country. Where better to hunt than somewhere like Russia, somewhere he could blend in?” Mycroft set the wastebasket back and reached for the hand sanitizer. “I recall he was a highly intelligent young man. Adept at languages and computers—quite the manipulator as well. Sherlock loathed him, of course. That competitive Holmes spirit, I suppose. And now he’s returned. I have no idea why, perhaps Sherlock will uncover something useful. At present, we should proceed with your plan. I’ll need access to your flat. I’m afraid I no longer carry a set of lockpicks.”

He turned to find Greg looking at him blankly and, for the life of him, he couldn’t determine which of his recent assertions had been so baffling.

“The flat.” Greg shook his head, then felt in his coat pocket for his keys. “I... yes. Keys. Of course. I have a spare at the office.” He removed the key with far more grace and speed than most people would have managed. He was clever with his hands and quick about everything, except when it was better to go slow.

That was one of Mycroft’s favourite things about Greg, his efficiency. Mycroft wasn’t sure exactly where it ranked in relation to things like the warmth of the little spot behind Greg’s ear that smelled safe and sleepy in the morning, his tendency to forget himself and curse at football match scores when they came up on his phone, his old wallet that Mycroft wanted so desperately to replace when Greg wasn’t looking but couldn’t bring himself to because it was so like Greg to use things until they were coming to pieces. All this time, Mycroft had been searching for a scale or a set of units with which he could quantify and compare those things but he was starting to understand that perhaps this was one thing he couldn’t reduce to an equation for his convenience.

“There’s laundry on the sofa,” Greg said. He was slinging bags of baby supplies over his shoulder and across his chest so he could take the car seat in one hand and his briefcase in the other. “Sorry about that, if I’d been expecting—“

“I do recall I’ve seen your underthings before, Greg. At least once,” Mycroft pointed out as he spun the key onto his keychain so he wouldn’t lose it. “I’m sure that seeing them out of context won’t damage my psyche in any way. I have laundry myself, you know. I’ve even done the wash a few times.”

Greg’s expression was an incredibly attractive blend of disbelief and exasperation. “Did you lose a bet?”

“I was a proper bachelor once. Briefly. I had a rebellious phase. Moment.” Mycroft wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone else. “It wasn’t expedient, that form of resistance, so I changed course and repented. But I’m still capable of working a hob and washing machine.”

“And lockpicks.” Greg looked like a nomad or a refugee, a survivor of some kind of disaster. Mycroft supposed that, in a way, he was a survivor, one who insisted on returning to the ongoing disaster of the chaotic human condition in hopes of imposing some order or, at least, justice. Mycroft filed that away—randomly, because he had no choice in the matter—among all the other things that were his favourite thing about Greg.

“Do you really think Sherlock sprung, fully formed, from the forehead of my father?” Mycroft finally got his cufflinks in place and felt more himself immediately.

“I’d rather thought he’d been found in the cabbage patch. Or switched in the cradle.” Greg held up the car seat with Rose sleeping soundly in it. “Who knows. Maybe some poor woman in Russia has no idea why she’s suddenly the mother of an intensely irritating genius.”

Mycroft couldn’t help laughing at that. He pulled on his suit jacket and shook it into place across his shoulders as though it were armour. “We should be grateful, then, that we got the good one.”

“Yes, I suppose so.” Greg was suddenly quite quiet, not just in his voice, but a stillness that came over all of him that Mycroft could feel as much as see out of the corner of his eye. “I’ll go out ahead. See you at the flat.”

Mycroft was left to finish suiting up alone. Once his gloves were on, he tidied up, folding Rose’s dirty old things and setting them in the bottom of the box. For a moment, he stopped seeing them for what they were to him—cheap and flimsy, ugly and insufficient—and saw them through the eyes of the mother who likely dressed her child. The pink tones were a close match, the white satin trim on the blanket complimented the rose appliqué.

“I am certain it was the best you could do,” he said, arranging the little sleeper on the blanket.

The likelihood that the woman was alive was small at best. The unfairness of it was overwhelming. Mycroft had no idea how Greg could withstand the daily grind of his job, all the grubby little mundane tragedies like an orphaned infant dressed in a cheap, wet sleeper, a child so hungry she nursed a bruise on her own tiny fist. Just another day at the office. There were the very reasons Mycroft kept to the work he did. Distance and control. He knew to play to his strengths.

On a piece of his stationery, he scrawled Return these things to me when you are finished with them--M. Holmes. They belonged to Rose. They might be the only things of her past ever recovered. Mycroft wasn’t about to discard them because they didn’t meet his standards. He tucked the note in the box, put his pen back in the precise spot from which he had removed it, and prepared to go. Keys. Phone. Façade. Umbrella.

The Tube wasn’t as atrocious as it might have been, as it was midmorning. Mycroft was uncomfortably aware of how out of place he was, resisted hiding behind his paper because it would be too terribly obvious what he was doing. Instead, he kept an eye out around him and placed the game he and Sherlock had played when they were younger. Once, it had been him, with his greater life experience, who had been better at deducing people’s stories.

A woman in sensible shoes and support hose was undoubtedly a home aide of some sort. She had capable, worn hands and faded hair. Her puffy blue coat was appalling on her, her grey uniform was polyester. She looked as though she’d been doing her job for some years. Possibly decades.

He noted some very fine white wisps of cat hair on her black fabric tote and several small pulls in the weave of her shoelaces. There was a thin scratch on back of her right hand. A new kitten, then. That cheered him up unexpectedly, the idea of her going home to a little cat in her flat after a long day at work. Sherlock had rarely been interested in imagining, merely observing and concluding, even as a child.

Mycroft played the game until the stop by Greg’s flat. He had no idea if he were correct or not. Looking at himself from the outside, he supposed he never would have made himself out to be a top-level Ministry man on his way to his lover’s flat to take possession of an illicitly obtained infant. That reminded him he needed to clear that up—he wouldn’t have Rose tied up in paperwork or sent to some home.

The rain battered him all the way to the flat. He was wet from knees to cuffs, sloshing around in his Italian wingtips. He’d memorized the code to the downstairs entry—Greg really needed to live somewhere with better security—and let himself into the building. As it always did, the functional, polished entry smelled of disinfectant and, for some reason, bike tyres.

Greg rode a bike on weekends. Mycroft hadn’t been on one since he was a young man and then only because school considered it a sport, one he didn’t have to do with anyone else—and it involved neither running nor being wet. Now, he couldn’t imagine himself in cycling shorts. Greg, on the other hand, was nearly irresistable in them. Mycroft supposed he might get the hang of it again if it meant a Sunday morning of staring at Greg’s arse all the way down to the Thames and back.

They had infant trailers for bikes, too, didn’t they? Bright orange carts came to mind. Fresh air was good for children. A Sunday ride sounded more appealing all the time, even if it did mean cycling shorts. Mycroft let himself into Greg’s flat as his phone chimed.

_RUSSIA?_

Ah. Sherlock. Seven characters full of wounded pride. Mycroft divested himself of his coat and umbrella before replying. _You overlooked the fine print on the nappy. Did Donnelly have a girlfriend?_

_No. Socially inept, for a manipulator._

Well. Sherlock was one to talk. _Any sign?_ Mycroft’s shoes were in desperately poor shape. He’d tend to them later.

 _Evidence of a squatter, with an infant. No reports of murders in the vicinity._ Sherlock sounded disappointed even via text message. Mycroft resisted the urge to apologize for that. _Nappies ARE Russian. Well-played. ‘Do not consume absorbent gel’? Depressing._

_Couldn’t agree more. Ideas as to motive?_

_None yet. Found partially-burned papers. Of course, now Watson reports a few rubles, pages of a Russian passport._ Sherlock’s irritation at that discovery not coming sooner was palpable even at a distance. Mycroft didn’t envy Watson’s proximity to his brother at the moment—or most moments, for that matter. _Infiltrating Britain while wrangling an infant seems implausible. Perhaps it’s local. Where is it?_

 _Rose is at the station with Lestrade. Thought it best._ Mycroft was not about to mention that he was presently wringing out his socks in Greg’s bathroom sink. He needed to find some solution to slopping around the flat in sodden trousers. For the first time, he regretted never leaving anything more substantial than a spare toothbrush and a spare suit behind. The idea of putting his fine woolen armour back on just to pace the floor didn’t appeal.

_Good. John foolishly suggested you plan to keep it._

_And how, pray tell, would it inconvenience you if I did?_ There followed a substantial pause. 

_Point taken. Must go._

Of course. Mycroft hung up his socks and, after a moment’s despair, abandoned his trousers over the towel rack. A quick rummage through Greg’s closet and drawers saw him in a pair of decent flannel pyjamas and a bathrobe. As he was tying the robe, he caught a glimpse of the photographs on the shelf in Greg’s bedroom. He rarely took the time to examine them—not out of a lack of interest but, perhaps, the opposite.

Greg’s children—hardly children anymore—were lovely creatures: A lop-haired, lanky son who had Greg’s eyes and facility for sports; a pale and plump daughter with a head of hair that rivaled Hermione Granger’s and an intellect to match. When had university come so early? Mycroft had certainly felt quite the man when he set out on his own.

Greg didn’t seem to appreciate the accomplishment that Mycroft saw in his having raised two such competent children. A pity the marriage had dissolved, more of a pity still that it had been infidelity that ended it. Still, Mycroft couldn’t dislike the ex-wife too much. Greg’s first love was his work and it was madness to expect a person to wait so long. Besides, it didn’t do to take sides in a matter that wasn’t his business.

It was uncharitable of him, to be certain, but Mycroft was grateful for the divorce. Without it, he’d never have had the opportunity for this kind of relationship with Greg—perhaps with anyone. He’d known he wanted this, much to his dismay and discomfort, since Greg had taken over managing Sherlock.

Dealing with Sherlock was a kind of crucible that burned away all irrelevancies and allowed true character to show through the dark circles under a man’s eyes, his unshaven jaw, his unflattering hair cut, his rumpled department store clothing. Being aware that, under better circumstances, he might have missed seeing Greg for what he was—genuine, solid, reliable, competent, and surprisingly patient—had given Mycroft pause more than once over the last year.

Mycroft wondered if he exerted the same inexorable influence on Greg as Greg did on him—and then he recalled the neatly folded row of fine new cotton handkerchiefs in Greg’s top drawer, the sighting of two quite acceptable ties amidst the atrocities on his tie rack, and Greg’s exquisitely sharp tone when dealing with a recalcitrant bureaucrat just last week. Perhaps, yes. That was rather warming.

His phone rang on Greg’s dresser and he had to check the caller to make sure he intended to answer—he’d deliberately not given Greg any special ring tone. Greg.

“Any news?” Mycroft was awkwardly aware of trespassing, especially awkward because it had felt perfectly natural to be here until he’d had the misfortune to notice himself.

“Interpol has flagged a set of Russian murders that look like Donnelly’s M.O.” There was a small outraged squawk in the background. Rose. “We’re going over the evidence while we wait on a sighting. No sign of the man so far, though Anderson is going through CCTV footage. We’ve pulled back from the Goldhawk area, set a wider cordon.”

“Is she all right?” Mycroft wasn’t sure how often babies fussed—Sherlock had been a bizarrely quiet child.

“Yes, she just isn’t very fond of Anderson.” Greg’s voice became distant as though he were turned away from the phone. “You look like you’re holding a bomb, no wonder she’s crying. I need my hands free for this work, you’ll have to manage.”

“She’s... she’s very active.” Anderson sounded genuinely perturbed as the outrage continued. “I don’t want to drop her but she’s not particularly cooperative.”

“Oh, for...” That was Donovan, approaching quickly. “Give her here.” The infant rage ceased almost immediately.

“Donovan!” Anderson sounded horrified. Mycroft imagined that his eyebrows were almost up in his hairline. “She’s not a sack of potatoes.”

“She’d rather be a sack of potatoes than a bomb. The reports from the lab, sir. Also, this. I went back over the files. You’ll want to see this.”

“Greg?” Mycroft found himself in the kitchen, putting the kettle on. Belatedly, he realized that Greg had to have the phone on speaker. Damn it.

“The couple on Goldhawk had a daughter. You’d mentioned a child,” Greg said distractedly. “File says Donnelly was accused of touching her improperly. Donovan, Anderson. Find the address, get over there.”

“Yes, sir,” Donovan said. “What do we do with...”

“Here.” Mycroft could see it clearly, he didn’t have to be there, Greg taking the baby competently in one arm. The nuk-nuk of her sucking a pacifier was audible. “No other family that we could find for that orphaned girl, it seems. No one came for her. She went into care. Pity. File suggests she was a bright girl before then. She was in the paper two weeks ago—article about her and her new baby. Looks like she was trying to make good.”

“That might have been the inciting incident this time. The first time being the accusation of impropriety. The parents, well. Parents. Sometimes you can hardly blame a person.” Mycroft took the kettle off the heat. He didn’t give a damn about the impropriety of what he said next. “If it’s her, I need to be there.”

“Mycroft.” Greg’s tone was inappropriately personal.

“It’s Rose’s mother.” Now that he had the information, Mycroft was walking with purpose through the edifice of his memories. His footsteps echoed high up in the vaulted ceilings of a library that existed only in his mind. He turned down the aisle of the correct year, followed numbers and letters like a thread of silk through a maze until he found a book that opened like a door. Within, a thin, sallow girl sat on a shabby chair, hands trapped between her nervous knees—she had her daughter’s eyes. “I remember her now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Do you ask Sherlock if he’s sure?” Mycroft couldn’t keep the snap out of his voice as he shed the robe.

“No, I don’t. Your charcoal suit with the blue pinstripe is on the back of the bedroom door, it’s almost out of season but it’s cold today.” Grey sounded subdued. Serious. “I had a note for you to put a new one up, just set it on the mirror so I remember. I’m sending a car, will tell Donovan to wait if they can.”

“I appreciate that.” Mycroft put his own phone on speaker, set it on the dresser. He shifted the sticky note to the bedroom mirror, unzipped the suit bag, and pulled out his spare façade.

“Mycroft,” Greg said in that same gentle tone. “This isn’t your fault.”

“I was a link in the chain that failed to restrain a serial killer.” Mycroft stripped bare before putting himself together again.

“Donnelly did the killing.”

“Sometimes, Greg, people can’t help being the thing they are.” Mycroft stepped into his pants, then reached for his undershirt. One layer at a time, he built himself up, every day. “It falls to the rest of us to mitigate the damage.”

Silence for a long time, then, “You do an admirable job, Mycroft. Just leave things when you go. I’ll pick up when I’m home.”

“Thank you.”

“Be careful.” Greg closed the line. Mycroft missed him intensely for a moment, much to his surprise.

It wasn’t like him to leave the pyjamas and robe crumpled at the foot of the bed. Wasn’t like him to wear a suit at least two weeks out of season. But he wasn’t the man he’d been when he woke that morning. He tied his tie in front of Greg’s mirror, smoothed out his hair with Greg’s comb.

He was overwhelmed with regret for all the mornings he could have done the same and didn’t—now, he couldn’t understand why. He wanted to. He wanted to be here, and damn the consequences, but he was the barrier to it. He had no one to blame but himself, in this and in the tragedy unfolding around him.

The officers who picked him up were properly serious, they put on the lights at his request as they sped across London. Mycroft’s phone chimed with Sherlock’s text tone.

_Daughter of the couple at Goldhawk?_

_Yes._

_You’re sure?_

Mycroft didn’t answer. He flipped over to Anthea’s number.

_Find me everything you can on Susan Karela and her daughter._

There was a long pause—usually she answered quite promptly. _Yes, sir. I’ll have the file shortly._

Mycroft had no idea where she was, nor did he care. If she couldn’t do the work, he didn’t want her in the role. The ruthlessness of the thought comforted him slightly. He was nothing if not distressed, certain that he was on his way to the scene of a murder he might well have prevented if only—if only he’d been less himself. If only Sherlock had been less himself. Perhaps, if only Greg had been there.

After an interminable race across the top of London and out into the surrounds, they arrived at a grim row of crumbling houses on a sprawling estate. The wet streets were lit up with the cycling lights of half a dozen police cars. Rags of old yellow caution tape still clung to a gate three houses down from the centre of attention. Mycroft recognized the silhouette of Anderson’s lean form holding an umbrella for Donovan, who had her head bent over her notebook.

Mycroft didn’t bother with his own umbrella as he stepped out. There was no ambulance in the vicinity. Perhaps it had already departed. Perhaps it hadn’t been needed.

“Donovan, report,” he said, dodging oil-shimmering puddles by instinct.

“It’s not good, sir.” She tugged up her hood, waved Anderson over with the umbrella. “Power’s out, and you don’t want to...”

“Don’t tell me what I want to do.” Mycroft shouldered between the two of them, ducked under the yellow tape before he could be detained. A faded blue and pink wreath hung crookedly on the half-open door. Within, he could smell the early stages of decay over a faint miasma of fry-ups and stale cigarettes. Not good indeed.

“Disappointing.” That was Sherlock. Draped in his long, dark coat, he loomed in the tiny front room like a modern Grim Reaper. “And cowardly.” He stood over a man’s body. Watson’s torch lit up a fresh, shining pool of blood around the shattered mess of what had been a skull.

“He must have returned here when his hideout on Goldhawk was discovered.” Mycroft took the torch from Watson’s hand without asking, quickly enough that the man couldn’t tighten his grip, then stepped over the body on his way into the room. “I assume that occurred when the first police cars arrived.”

He had fully expected to see the scene that waited for him there but the expectation hadn’t prepared him for the reality.

Susan—he would never forget her name now, saw her younger-self in the past through the one-way mirror of an observation room—was splayed out in a rocking chair. Blood clotted around the wire binding her at ankles, wrists, and throat. Her throat had been cut just below the wire but, Mycroft was certain, not before the cuts to her abdomen had been made. Her organs lay in her lap. Behind her on the wall was scrawled, in her own blood: **_YOU DIDN’T STOP ME_**.

Susan’s eyes were wide open, staring somewhere beyond Mycroft’s shoulder. He withdrew his handkerchief, wrapped it around his finger, and carefully drew down the lid over each. There was nothing more to be done. He turned slowly, lighting the scene and storing the panorama away in a special volume of photographs he hoped not to see again—but knew he would draw out again and again to pore over, wondering what else he could have done.

There was a playpen, an ashtray, empty tins of lager, a pizza box, a bottle with the formula gone off and clotted within. A stack of DVDs slumped on the floor under the television. _Coronation Street. All Creatures Great and Small. Doctor Who._ The plain, concrete, honest life of the poor. There was little romantic about it.

The circle of the light slid across crumpled wrapping paper and some discarded boxes. Gifts, it looked like. Recent gifts. He recognized the design of the nappies in the picture on an unopened package of them. The lettering was Russian.

“He brought gifts for the child, baby supplies for the mother’s convenience.” Sherlock said coolly, when Mycroft felt anything but cool. Cold, yes, and a hot churn of emotions under it. “Uncertain still as to whether she rejected him and provoked the murder or he took offense to the inadequacies of the conditions. I recall that being a potential motive—saving children from their parents.”

“She knew him, and she had her child to protect,” Mycroft kept his tone even, his expression smooth, when he wanted to rage. It would do no good to anyone for him to indulge. He turned off the torch as the power came back up—someone must have repaired the outage. “She was a survivor of one of his murders already. I expect that, should you find anything, it will be evidence that he was unable to keep from killing her and would have manufactured any excuse to do so. Thank you.” Mycroft returned the torch to Watson, stepped over the dead killer on his way out.

“I’ll have someone come and remove the belongings once the crime scene is cleared,” he said to Donovan as he stepped out into the rain again.

“Yes, sir. Will you be returning to London?”

“I’ve seen all I need to see.” He didn’t remember Donnelly’s face, wouldn’t remember anything of him but a black void and a puddle of blood. “Unfortunate business.”

“It happens, sir. In spite of us.” When Mycroft turned to look at Donovan—as the rain abated suddenly by Anderson’s prompt application of the umbrella—she looked uncharacteristically sorrowful. “The ones that involve children are always the hardest.”

“As they should be.” Mycroft drew himself up to his full height, tucked away his handkerchief, and adjusted his coat to better protect his suit. “Nothing about this should be easy for anyone. This is a joint failure of epic proportions.” He hadn’t missed the movement in the corner of his eye that was unmistakably his brother. “On all our parts. No need to let the media know that but we should not forget.”

Sherlock’s snort was audible over the patter of rain on the umbrella and, for once, Mycroft refused to ignore it.

“Perhaps less arrogance would have been the curative for this, years ago.” In his mind, Mycroft closed the book on the thin girl on the chair, backed up one pace and removed a thick black volume that opened onto a scene of Sherlock, slightly manic, alienating yet another DI in the years before Lestrade. Before Greg. Mycroft owed him a great deal. Couldn’t imagine life without him, really. “Need I remind you?”

“Hardly.” In the halflight of the rainy day, Sherlock’s face was alabaster carved in resentful lines. Mycroft knew with absolute certainty that, somewhere in his mind, Sherlock was looking in on the same scene that had resulted in him losing access to vital information on the case.

“Arrogance on both our parts.” Mycroft recalled not having handled it well, himself. He’d been endlessly frustrated with Sherlock in those days. Too harsh, too cold, too humiliating, trying desperately to rein his brother in somehow—and failing. “I goaded you that day. It was inappropriate. I apologize.”

He turned his back on his brother’s surprise and closed the book in his mind, set it back on the shelf. The car was waiting, still, and Anderson followed in his wake, caught up to hold the police tape for him.

“Our working theory at present is that the killer was devolving,” Anderson reported. The sense of detachment brought by framing it all in theoretical, professional terms was a welcome relief. “Scans of what remained of the passport link to a private security systems contractor in Russia, one connected to the mob—Grigory Algorev. We’re certain it’s Donnelly. Donovan believes he brought you the child in an attempt to provoke you, or Sherlock, into stopping him before he killed again.”

“That would fit with the evidence at hand.” Mycroft took his seat in the car again and pulled out his phone as he settled in. “Forward all further reports to my office, if you would, Anderson. Well done.” He took one last look out the open door, past Anderson, to imprint the scene in his mind. “Pity your team wasn’t on this the first time.”

“Thank you, sir. I’m sure the detectives involved did their best,” Anderson said stolidly. He was a loyal sort, far too sensitive for his own good, the kind of man who’d got his head shoved in toilets as a lad and never quite fathomed why or how to make it stop. Yet, here he was, keeping on. He needed someone like Donovan to look after him.

“They might well have, but... mistakes were made and the wrong person paid that price. That’ll be all, Anderson.” Mycroft did up his seat belt as Anderson shut the car door. “Back to where you picked me up, thank you.” If they didn’t know it was Greg’s apartment, he wasn’t about to tell them so.

“Yes, sir.”

Mycroft opened his briefcase to remove his agenda. He would have to reschedule some appointments over the next few days. Pen in hand, he began making adjustments until his phone chirrupped with an incoming file. He scrolled through Anthea’s findings, tapping his pen against the phone until he recognized the nervous tic and stopped it with an irritated scowl at his own weakness.

Susan Karela, aged nineteen. Entered care at age fourteen upon the murder of her parents. No extended family. Never completed her schooling. Infant daughter—Amelia Rose, aged seven weeks and two days—no father listed. Mother unable to recall when she might have fallen pregnant, nor by whom. Mycroft felt no disdain, merely deep pity and sadness. _Poor little girl_ , he thought, and meant Susan.

He messaged Anthea promptly. _I’ll be taking the child. See to the paperwork._

_Sir, usually I wouldn’t ask. An infant? Are you sure?_

_Does all of London truly assume I don’t know my own mind? I don’t want to hear it again._

Truth was, Mycroft was startled at his own certainty. The dilemmas and catastrophes spawned by his choice unfolded in front of him. Greg was done parenting. His role hardly allowed for the acquisition of an infant, not without certain consequences. One party, however, was recently partial to babies and she might be fully approving of his choice. That particular party held the only approval he truly required and, even so, he wasn’t about to be swayed be her disapproval if it came.

Further, though he was not superstitious, he was comforted by the synchronicity of little Amelia Rose’s name, even while it saddened him. Had Susan longed to be one of the chosen ones, a girl fortunate enough to be swept away from her dreadful life by a strange man in a police box? He supposed she must have had a fleeting moment of it, in her way, rescued from her parents’ brutal murder scene by kindly officers and then, no sooner than she had been redeemed, abandoned to the vagaries of an overloaded system.

Mycroft had failed her in more ways than he could count. Raising the child left behind seemed the least he could do—and it was something he very much wanted to do, though it had come on him suddenly. He could have found an excellent home, seen to her schooling, but he wanted to do this himself.

The ease with which he distanced himself from everything—from people, from emotions, from consequences—had been of great benefit in one way but he was more and more desirous that it be his choice, and not his natural state. For that, he could only blame Greg. On cue, his phone sounded with the generic tones that were Greg’s. The coincidence was hardly surprising. In truth, Greg was never far from his thoughts these days.

 _I’m sorry_ , the message read. And that, of all things, made Mycroft’s nose uncomfortably hot.

_How is she?_

_Making a nuisance of herself. As they do._ Greg didn’t seem annoyed, at least. _Did Anthea get you her information?_

_Yes. Unfortunate situation all around. I’m returning to the flat._

_Tea’s on. Thought you could use something hot early._

_Thank you._

Mycroft wasn’t sure what to make of the sensation of returning to the flat, emotionally worn and physically chilled, with the expectation of Greg and a hot meal and a nuisancey infant—his nuisancey infant—awaiting him. He drew an extra handkerchief from his briefcase, blew his nose. _Enough of that_. He put it out of his head while he got back to rearranging his schedule.

The door was unlocked when he got to the flat. As soon as he opened it, he smelled something warm and welcoming cooking. He closed the door behind him quietly and took off his shoes. A high, tinkling little music box tune was playing, the kettle clattered on the stove, then the baby began screeching vigorously.

“Well, don’t spit it out, silly thing. You don’t like it when that happens,” Greg said patiently. The water ran for a moment, then the noising stopped abruptly. “There’s a good girl. At least don’t spit it on the floor so I have to go fetch it.”

“Is she being difficult?” Mycroft stepped out of the hall, half-dreading the answer.

“She’s a baby, difficult is what they do,” Greg said without rancour. He was out of his work clothes, in his shirtsleeves and jeans, a dish towel tucked in his back pocket where he’d forget it until he needed it and then he’d turn the kitchen over looking for it. “Look who’s home, Rose.”

Greg spun the car seat around on the kitchen table so that Rose was facing Mycroft. She was wearing floral denim overalls over a pink jumper, with matching pink booties, and sucking drowsily on a blue pacifier—not the one she’d left with. Mycroft was certain he’d seen something in the baby goods that was a kind of leash for pacifiers and, now, it didn’t seem like such a strange purchase.

“She doesn’t know who I am.” Mycroft stifled the ridiculous notion that she might be looking forward to seeing him. He put his briefcase down, then shed his coat with some relief. “Her full name is Amelia Rose, strangely enough.”

“Not so strange, if one keeps up with popular culture. I’m not quite as fond of Amelia as Rose, I have to say,” Greg nattered on as he scooped tea into the infuser. “It’s a lovely name, though, Amelia Rose. Goes well with Holmes.”

“Not going to ask me if I’m sure, then?” Mycroft hung up his coat, trying to leave his irritability on the hook with the damn thing. “I realize that you’re done with raising your children, of course. I won’t fault you if you’d rather...” He trailed off as he turned and took in Greg’s expression and crossed arms.

“Of course you’re bloody sure,” Greg’s words were clipped, the muscles in his neck were taut above his open collar, his jaw was set. “You’re Mycroft-bloody-Holmes, you don’t do anything if you’re not damned certain. I’m certain Anthea’s halfway through the paperwork already. The only thing I’ve ever wondered if you were sure about is _me_.”

Mycroft stopped in his tracks halfway across the living area, too aware of himself all over again, aware of his rain-flattened hair and his damp tie and his sock-feet. He was too old for all of this, too arrogant, and too foolish as a result. Too old to do it alone, by any means. Outside of his domain he was a caricature of the powerful man he’d tried so hard to be—the kind of man who was so accomplished and so impervious within his own sphere that he inadvertently became ridiculous beyond it. It had all been well and good when he had planned to stay safe in his own world forever.

That was the thing that made him uncertain. Knowing he was ludicrously out of place in Greg’s world, that in truth he was full of errors and failures he couldn’t mask and, the longer he was in this world, the more it showed. The more weak he was. Therein lay all his apprehension.

Not Greg. Not Greg with his silvered hair glowing in the low light, his ridiculously perfect mouth, his strong arms crossed over his warm chest where Mycroft loved—and furiously refused to admit he loved lest he look as pitiful to Greg as he did to himself—to lay his head. Mycroft was as certain about Greg as he was about Rose.

“I love you,” he said, because it was the truth and he ought to get used to saying the words to someone. To Greg, to Rose, to all two people he could say it to... such a sad little number. He had failed at that part of living, not that he had been prepared for it at all. “You are the reason for all of this. Not that I am doing it for you, but that I can do it because of you. Because of who I am since... since you.”

He and Greg stared at each other over the kitchen table and the baby seat set in the middle of it. Mycroft had no idea how he could make a bigger fool of himself, but he was certain that—if pressed—he could certainly keep digging. He hadn’t gotten down on his knees yet.

Carefully, Greg took the towel from his back pocket and hung it up on the rack, then took the kettle off the heat. Mycroft gave a good amount of thought to the idea of getting down on his knees. He refrained only because he wasn’t entirely certain that his unsteady legs would let him get back up again. The closer Greg came, however, the less sure he was that he was going to have a choice in the matter if Greg didn’t say something soon.

Greg stopped in front of him and, gently, took Mycroft’s face in his hands. With great seriousness, he asked, “Are you sure?” Mycroft froze, caught between an instinctive surge of frustration and a crushing cascade of confusion. Then, the corner of Greg’s mouth twitched upward, and he said, “I love you, too. You absolute idiot.”

“I’m afraid I am,” Mycroft said, even as Greg started laughing quietly. “Completely certain. And an idiot, Greg.”

“I know.” Greg kissed him on the mouth, tenderly, then slid his arms around Mycroft’s neck. His hips were warm under Mycroft’s hands, everything about him was solid and real and unshakeable, as though some invisible piece of him went all the way to the core of the Earth. “It’s acceptable to be an idiot at times, Mycroft. You’d better get used to it, and to being wrong. Love and children make fools of us like nothing else.”

“Is this a terrible idea?” Abruptly, Mycroft was seized with an uncharacteristic bout of panic.

“Go pick up your daughter and tell me.” Greg kissed him again and it was so sweet and soothing, Mycroft’s pulse stopped trying to batter its way out of his throat. “That always worked for me.”

Mycroft laid his suit jacket over the back of one of the chairs before he tried unbuckling Rose’s car seat. Sherlock himself would have a hard time getting it undone but, after a bit of fumbling, Mycroft got her free. Rose made approving nuk-nuk noises around her pacifier as he picked her up and cradled her in his arms. When he settled her against him, it was though a piece of his heart had returned to itself and he sighed with relief.

“No.” He didn’t care that his vision was blurry and his nose was hot again, wouldn’t have cared if the Queen herself had been watching. “It’s not a mistake.” He kissed Rose on her wispy little blonde curls. “I’m sorry I’m what you’ve got now and not your mum,” he said to her. “And that anything I did got you here. But I will do my best.”

Rose spat out her pacifier in response and it rolled down her tummy into her lap. She pursed her perfect little red lips, then pouted dramatically.

“She keeps doing that.” Greg sniffled and then exhaled sharply before he rescued the pacifier. “It’s bloody irritating.” He popped it into her mouth with one hand. This close, Mycroft could see that his lashes were damp. _Oh_. Just when Mycroft thought he couldn’t adore him more.

“She just wants to make sure we feel needed.” Mycroft patted her little bottom with the hand under her. “Otherwise we might go back to being a couple useless pillocks.”

“Feel better?” Greg wasn’t looking at Mycroft, his eyes were on Rose.

Mycroft shifted her weight slightly to hold her in one arm and put the other arm around Greg’s shoulders, drawing him in for a kiss. “Better. And very... human. I would hardly have conflated the two until now.”

“Get used to it.” Greg put an arm around Mycroft’s waist, put his head on Mycroft’s shoulder. “She’s going to make both of us feel like complete monkeys—and like it—before she’s done with us.”

“Us?” Mycroft thought he ought to double-check. “I wasn’t assuming... not that I don’t want... I mean...”

“Are you planning to do all the two-in-the-morning feeds yourself? You’re useless at that hour.” Greg did have a point. Mycroft was a bit of a bear in the middle of the night. Greg was out of bed and on the move with irritating vigor—probably came with being a police officer.

“If you want, you’d have to...” Have to move in. Greg’s flat wasn’t nearly large enough. Mycroft’s flat, the sprawling elegant cream and white flat that managed to be less welcoming than his office, was hardly suited for a baby. He wasn’t raising Rose in the kind of world in which he’d been brought up, that was certain. “I’ll have Anthea find some options near a good park then, shall I?”

“Parks are important.” Greg tapped Rose on the nose and she bubbled around her pacifier, then kicked a corduroy bootie off and into his face. “Someone’s going to need all the exercise she can get.”

“If we had a yard, she could have a dog.” Mycroft was certain, as he said it, that a dog was a necessity. “A dog and a swing set. Maybe a tree house.”

“I could manage that. Always wanted to build a tree house.” Greg retrieved the bootie, then struggled to get it back on while Rose evaded him by kicking so vigorously that Mycroft needed two hands for her—then the other bootie flew off.

“Damn it, Mycroft. I can use a bloody table saw,” Greg said, as Mycroft started to laugh. He shook the booties. “These are harder to get on than you’d think.”

“Language, Greg.” Mycroft kissed one of Rose’s chubby pink feet as it flailed past his face. “Someone’s going to have to watch his mouth.”

“Your father’s mad if he thinks you’re not going to grow up cursing like one of the lads, Rose.” Greg finally got one of the booties back on. “How are you going to be one of the greatest detectives of Scotland Yard if you can’t run with the pack?”

“She might be a politician,” Mycroft objected. He relented, though, and caught Rose’s leg so Greg could get the second bootie on her.

“Oh, like she’s going to have a choice.” Greg got the bootie on, then brushed a kiss over Mycroft’s cheek. “Wait until Uncle Sherlock gets his hands on her.”

Mycroft hadn’t even considered that notion. That was horrifying and delightful at once, the idea of Sherlock attempting to educate a child. “America, Rose. How do you feel about running off to America?” Rose spat her pacifier in an impressive arc. It hit the floor and rolled under the kitchen table.

“Maybe she’ll be a shop girl.” Greg’s voice was muffled as he got down and crawled under the table after it. The sight was charming for more than just the way his jeans pulled snug across his arse.

“You can be anything you want,” Mycroft assured Rose as she blew a wet raspberry at him and batted her lashes, wriggling in an effort to gain his approval. He smiled to reassure her. “You can even be dreadful at it if it makes you happy. I won’t care. You can be an astronaut or a shop girl or both. I promise: I will love you all the same. Mistakes and all.”


End file.
